The CNQ Dusty Bookcase (2010 - 2023)

The most recent issue of Canadian Notes & Queries landed late last week. Since then, Canadians have been sending notes and queries regarding the future of the Dusty Bookcase.

It will continue, but not on paper.

It was in 2010, when I was focussed on completing my biography of John Glassco, that editor Alex Good invited me to contribute the Dusty Bookcase as a regular column. Naturally, I chose Glassco's grand hoax The Temple of Pederasty as my subject. My review, of sorts, appeared in CNQ 80.

The next thirteen years saw twenty-five more: 

The Miracle Man - Frank L. Packard (CNQ 81)

The Errand Runner - Leah Rosenberg (CNQ 82)

Love is a Long Shot - Alice K. Doherty [Ted Allan] (CNQ 83)

The Abolishing of Death - Basil King (CNQ 84)

John Glassco: A Personal and Working Library (CNQ 86)

Tan Ming - Lan Stormont [Morse Robb] (CNQ 87)

The Bumper Book and Carry on Bumping - John Metcalf (CNQ 88)

St. Cuthbert's of the West - Robert E. Knowles (CNQ 90)

The Land of Afternoon - Gilbert Knox [Madge Macbeth] (CNQ 92)

The Wine of Life - Arthur Stringer (CNQ 93)

There Are Victories - Charles Yale Harrison (CNQ 94)

Don't You Know Anybody Else? - Ted Allan (CNQ 97)

The Treehouse - Helen Duncan (CNQ 98)

Lust Planet - Olin Ross [W.E.D. Ross] (CNQ 101)

The Shapes That Creep - Marjorie Bonner (CNQ 102)

A Lover More Condoling - Adrian Clarkson (CNQ 103)

The Arch-Satirist - Frances de Wolfe Fenwick (CNQ 104)

Christie Redfern's Troubles - [Margaret Murray Robertson] (CNQ 105)

Hotter Than Hell - Mark Tushingham (CNQ 106)

The Master of the Microbe - Robert W. Service (CNQ 107)

The Terror of the Tar Sands - Edmund C. Cosgrove (CNQ 108)

An African Millionaire - Grant Allan (CNQ 109)

East of Temple Bar - Joan Suter [Joan Walker] (CNQ 111)

Behold the Hour - Jeann Beattie (CNQ 112)

Added to these were reviews written for the CNQ website. They're online still:

Cry Hallelujah! - Kenneth Orvis

Where Is Jenny Now? - Frances Shelley Wees 

Comeback - Dan Hill

Black Feather - Benge Atlee

The Heiress of Castle Cliffe - May Agnes Fleming

The Land of Frozen Suns - Bertrand W. Sinclair

Backstage Nurse - Jane Rossiter [W.E.D. Ross]

Strange Desires - Alan Malston 

The Girl at Bullet Lake - H.A. Cody

Murder's No Picnic - E.L. Cushing

Their Man in the White House - Tom Ardies

Not every Dusty Bookcase took the form of a review. There were columns devoted to correspondence between of Norman Levine and Jack McClelland (CNQ 85), Montreal's post-war pulp novels (CNQ 89), the career of Ronald J. Cooke (CNQ 91), Pierre Berton and Charles Templeton's Tour de Force board game (CNQ 95), an interview with Formac Fiction Treasures series editor Gwendolyn Davies (CNQ 96), Brian Moore's Intent to Kill on film (CNQ 99), my hunt for Kenneth Ovis (CNQ 100), and the career of Garnet Weston (CNQ 110).

A selection of books featured over the years.
Cliquez pour agrandir.

The early columns benefited from Alex's red pen, the latter were made whole under his successor Emily Donaldson. I had such fun working with Emily, which made last issue's column, a review of Jeann Beattie's entirely forgotten novel Behold the Hour, something of a challenge. We all knew CNQ 112 was to be her last as editor, despite our pleading.

Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered...

Well, not really. 

I will continue in the role of Contributing Editor, which means that I'll still be contributing, but not as a columnist. Emily joins me at the large oak editorial boardroom table as a fellow Contributing Editor. Alex is by her side. 

My thanks to Alex for inviting me into the room, to Emily for not showing me the door, and to publisher Dan Wells who has gone so far as to host me at his home. Drinks were served. CNQ continues because of their dedication to a book and literary culture that is more than ever preyed upon by foreign vultures. 

As everyone surely knows, vultures have bad breath.

The latest issue of CNQ can be purchased through this link.

Criminal Notes & Queries

The most recent number of Canadian Notes & Queries – The Crime Issue – arrived last week in our Upper Canada rural mailbox. I was honoured to serve as Guest Editor. It was a pleasure putting it together, though I must admit that the heavy lifting was done by regular editor Emily Donaldson.

As always, Seth's provides the front and back covers. Tell the truth, do you not see yourself in one of his mugshots?

In The Landscape, Seth shares an undated, uncredited insert from The Weekend Magazine – which, as he notes, was itself an insert.

"What’s Old," our regular salute to reissues, coupled with offerings from the country’s antiquarian booksellers features Austin Clarke's When He Was Free and Young and He Used to Wear Silks (Anansi, 2021),  Carmine Starnino's Dirty Words: Selected Poems, 1997-2016 (Gaspereau, 2021), a new translation of Markoosie Patsauq's Hunter with Harpoon (MQUP, 2021). Windsor's Juniper Books offers The Executioners (Harlequin, 1951) and French for Murder (Fawcett, 1954), two old Brian Moore pulps that the late author's estate has kept out of print.

The Guest Editor’s Note, in which I recall childhood trauma brought on by a speeding ticket, is followed by the issue's Dusty Bookcase. This one is unusual in that the volume covered, Grant Allen's fin de siècle novel An African Millionaire, is not only in print, but is a certified Penguin Classic. We all remember studying it in high school, right?

Adam Sol and Manahil Bandukwala provide verse.

The issue's features begin with "Sin City," Will Straw's look at Police Journal, the post-war Montreal crime tabloid that anticipated Allô Police.

In "A Requiem for Skid Row," Amy Lavender Harris writes about a Toronto that has fallen to condos, but lives on in the works of Juan Butler, Austin Clarke, and Hugh Garner.

Novelist Trevor Ferguson (aka John Farrow) writes of his encounters with the criminal element in  "Fringe Elements."

Dedicated readers will remember my interest in the mysterious Kenneth Orvis (aka Kenneth Lemieux), author of Hickory House, The Damned and Destroyed,  Cry, Hallelujah!, and four other novels. You may even remember my 2016 plea for information about the man. Imagine my surprise in discovering that former 39 Steps frontman Chris Barry – whom I've seen onstage in Montreal and onscreen in Hannah and Her Sisters – is the mystery man's nephew.  Chris' "Uncle Ken, We Hardly Knew Ye: Kenneth Orvis’ Nephew Surveys the Writer’s Life, Hustles, and Mysterious Disappearance" helps fill in the gaps.

In "Vale of Fears," Monika Bartyzel looks at the influence of a 1935 murder on the fiction of Phyllis Brett Young, our most unjustly neglected novelist.

Jennifer Hambleton disturbs with "Shut Out: How University Libraries are Increasingly Limiting Public Access.

David Frank writes on the relationship between Jack London and all but forgotten Canadian socialist Wilfrid Gribble.

Chris Kelly looks at Blue City, the 1986 adaptation of the 1947 Ross Macdonald novel of the same name. You remember it, right? Judd Nelson and Ally Sheedy starred.

No?

This GIF may refresh you memory.

I intrude again with an interview with Danny McAuley of Brome Lake Books in Knowlton, Quebec.

David Mason's Used and Rare column concerns book thieves and a revelation about a certain famous author.

In the North Wing - selections from the Lost Library of CanLit Graphic Novels -  Nathan Campagnaro adapts Thomas King’s DreadfulWater.

We've also got a new short story from Caroline Adderson, “All Our Auld Acquaintances Are Gone.”

At a time when newspapers and magazines are slashing space devoted to book reviews, we buck the trend with:

Bruce Whiteman on Erin McLaren’s Little Resilience

Rohan Maitzen on Anna Porter’s The Appraisal and Deceptions

Laura Cameron on Amanda LeDuc’s The Centaur’s Wife 

Brett Josef Grubisic on Michael Melgaard’s Pallbearing 

Alex Good on Pasha Malla’s Kill the Mall 

Paige Cooper on Carrie Jenkins’ Victoria Sees It 

Dancy Mason on Patricia Robertson’s Hour of the Crab 

James Grainger on Andrée A Michaud’s Mirror Lake

Emily Donaldson on Sarah Berman’s Don’t Call it a Cult

The Shelf Talker belongs to The Bookshelf in Guelph. Catherine Bush's Blaze Island is one of their four titles.

As always, we finish off with Stephen Fowler's Exhumations. His pick this issue is Writing Thrillers for Profit: A Practical Guide by Basil Hogarth (London, Black, 1936), a volume that once belonged to "a recently deceased author of detective novels." Stephen suggests that it may have been a "joke gift." I'm betting he's right.

The CNQ Crime Issue can be purchased through this link.

It's a steal.

CNQ: Spring? Spring Ish

“When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere.”

The same might be said of a magazine's Spring Issue landing in July. Something is seriously wrong, though I dare say we're getting used to it. Yesterday, I donned a mask, looked about, and felt good that others waiting to buy beer had done the same.

What a long, strange year this has been... and it's barely half-way done. I like to think the arrival of this new issue of Canadian Notes & Queries signals a return to better times. There's a whole lot to look at, like this issue's What's Old, which features:

Here I remind readers that my birthday is next month.

The Dusty Bookcase column in this issue concerns Robert W. Service's thriller The Master of the Microbe. Published in 1926, its hero, an American expat living in Montparnasse, stumbles over a plot to unleash a deadly virus that attacks the respiratory system. Its earliest pages are as interesting and entertaining as anything I've read this year.

You'll also find Bruce Whiteman on George Fetherling, whose The Writing Life (Montreal: McGill-Queens UP, 2013) I edited:

I'm all in with Nigel Beale, who sounds off on the disregard this country demonstrates toward its literary heritage:

David Mason is spot on: There's no such thing as book hoarding.

The embarrassment of riches continues with Colette Maitland's contribution:

And then there's Cynthia Holz's memoir, 'Out of the Bronx':

Other contributors include:

Jeff Bursey

Page Cooper

Elaine Dewar

Meags Fitzgerald

Stephen Fowler

Ulrikka S. Gernes

Basia Gilas

Douglas Glover

Alex Good

Brett Josef Grubisic

Alex Pugsley

Seth

Kelly S. Thompson

Shelley Wood

and

editor Emily Donaldson

An unexpected treat, the copy I received included this insert:

Again, my birthday is next month.

Let the Margaret Murray Robertson Revival Begin!

Christie Redfern’s Troubles

by the author of “Mark Wedgewood’s Wooing,” etc. [Margaret Murray Robertson]

London: The Religious Tract Society, [c. 1866]

384 pages

Christie Redfern’s troubles are so many that they spill over into her backstory. Poor girl, she began life as the fourth child of a Scottish businessman and his loving, fertile wife. Mrs Redfern died, but not before giving birth to four more children. The role of family matriarch was then taken up by Mr Redfern’s stern spinster sister Elsie, but the aunt’s firm, yet helpful hand was not enough to prevent the decline of Mr Redfern’s enterprise. What was that enterprise? Doesn’t matter. What’s important is that it failed, causing Mr Redfern to move the family to the New World and a farm in Canada West’s Glengarry County. That Mr Redfern knew little about agriculture suggests something about his failure as a businessman. To make matters worse:

Soon after their arrival in their new home, Aunt Elsie was seized with an illness which lingered long, and left her a cripple when it went away; and her temper was not of the kind which suffering and helplessness are said sometimes to improve. It was a trying time to all.

No doubt.


So begins my latest Dusty Bookcase review for Canadian Notes & Queries. The issue in which it appears – number 105 – arrived in yesterday's post. I poured over it last night, between peeks at election coverage.

"Grand Theft Bibio," Michael Melgaard's excellent piece on book thieves, was the first to distract my troubled mind.

Ray Fawkes' adaptation of Pattern Recognition by William Gibson was a visual feast.

I couldn't have agreed more with Rod Moody-Corbett's essay on Saul Bellow.

All, as always, is wrapped in covers by Seth. Lord knows, this snap doesn't do it justice.

I ask you, how many magazines have French flaps?

Other contributors include:

Jeremiah Bartram
Jeff Bursey
Andreae Callanan
Paige Cooper
Candace de Taeye
Emily Donaldson
Deborah Dundas
Carey Fagan
Stephen Fowler
Alex Good
Brett Josef Grubisic
David Huebert
David Mason
Edward O'Connor
Rudrapriya Rathore
Yusuf Saadi
Nathan Whitlock
and
the late David Helwig

Christie Redfern's Troubles is just about the most depressing thing I've ever read.

Does that not make it a novel for our time?

Related post:

Margaret Murray Robertson Matrimonial Mystery

(& Canadian literature's most tear-stained novel)

A Novel Every Bit as Good as Its Title

The Fiftieth Anniversary Issue of Canadian Notes & Queries arrived in my mailbox this week. I should've received it last month. I blame Deepak Chopra – not the Ageless Body Timeless Mind Deepak Chopra, this one.

Being the Fiftieth Anniversary Issue, much of the focus is on books from 1968:

Les Manuscrits de Pauline Archange - Marie-Claire Blais

Sarah Bastard's Notebook - Marian Engel

I Am Mary Dunne - Brian Moore

The Shattered Plinths - Irving Layton

John Metcalf writes on the short story "Images" from Dance of the Happy Shades, Alice Munro's debut. Not to be outdone, I chose to review A Lover More Condoling, the first novel by then-Take 30 co-host Adrienne Clarkson. Despite her fame, it enjoyed one lone printing, and never appeared in paperback. As I note in my review, the novel isn't so much as mentioned in Heart Matters, Clarkson's 2006 memoir.

Might A Lover More Condoling be a forgotten treasure? Not wanting to spoil things, I'll say only that it has the most memorable sex scene I've read since Donna Steinberg's I Lost it All in Montreal.

Other contributors include:

Randy Boyagoda

Andreae Callanan

Scott Chantler

Paige Cooper

Trevor Corkum

Kayla Czaga

Rachel Décoste

Daniel Donaldson

Antony Easton

Jesse Eckerlin

André Forget

Stephen Fowler

Alex Good

James Grainger

Benjamin Hertwig

Doyali Islam

Tasneem Jamal

Anita Lehey

Sibyl Lamb

Tracey Lindberg

Rabindranath Maharaj

Rohan Maitzen

David Mason

Patricia Robertson

Mary H. Aurbach Rykov

Seth

JC Sutcliffe

Vit Wagner

Bruce Whiteman

Martha Wilson

The fifty-first year sees CNQ striking out in a new direction. "We decided a radical expansion of our reviewer estate was necessary given ever-shrinking critical space the nation's newspapers, online journals, and periodicals," writes editor Emily Donaldson.

And so, we have the very first CNQ book review supplement, with contributions by:

Michael Barrett

Michel Basilières

Stephen Beattie

Jeremiah Bertram

Jeff Bursey

Kerry Clare

Allison Gillmor

Monique Giroux

Alex Good

Brett Joseph Grubisic

Stephen Henighan

Amanda Jernigan

Tess Liem

Domenica Martinello

Dilia Narduzzi

Ruprapriya Rathmore

Mark Sampson

Sarah Tolmie

Jonathan Valelly

Derek Webster

Jared Young

If you haven't already, now seems just the time to become a subscriber... easily done through this link.

The Canada Post carrier who delivered this magazine to our rural mailbox chose not to fold it.

She is not paid enough.

Related posts:

The Year of Grade School Readers, Cute Kittens

and Dead Anglos Hanging in the Streets of Montreal

Not to Be Confused with Bust Planet

The new issue of Canadian Notes & Queries has arrived, bringing with it my long promised review of W.E.D. Ross's Lust Planet (1962), Canada's very first work of science fiction erotica. I found the novel every bit as good as expected.

Collectors of Canadian literature are advised to pick up this France' Book – oddly-named imprint of Hollywood's International Publications – while they still can. As I write, I see just one copy listed for sale online. To those requiring further enticement, I offer this: something I neglected to mention in the review is that Lust Planet features three intriguing illustrations. Intriguing because they have no connection at all with the text.

The other two are even better.

As I say, get it while you can. Better yet, subscribe to CNQ... easily done through this link at the magazine's website.

This issue's contributors include:

Madhur Anand

Jason Dickson

Jesse Eckerlin

André Forget

Cecil Foster

Stephen Fowler

Alex Good

Dominic Hardy

Ann Ireland

Penn Javdan

Samuel Johnson

Colette Maitland

Dominic Martinello

David Mason

Dakota McFadzean

Rebecca Rosenblum

Kate Sherren

JC Sutcliffe

Derek Webster

Bruce Whiteman

In addition to the cover and design, Seth reflects on CANADA official handbooks of days gone by (including this one): "I find these books fascinating, in a doctor's office kind of way. They have a sort of sublime dullness about them. A quality hard to put into words. Pleasing. Comforting. Sleep-inducing."

Editor Emily Donaldson not only put the whole thing together, she contributed a review of  David Chariandy's Brother.

This issue marks the second time I've shared pages with John Metcalf. Friends will recognize how much this means to me. Coincidentally, it was through John that I first learned of W.E.D. Ross.

Related post:

Winning With the erotic W.E.D. Ross
The Greater Canada of 1962
When Poets Ruled; Or, Never Mind the Novelists

The Dusty Bookcase — The Book!

The Dusty Bookcase arrived at our home this past Friday, meaning copies are now making their way to bookstores across the country.

I'm a lucky man.

This blog began as a place to record and share my thoughts on obscure Canadian writing. At most, I was hoping to hear from others who had, say, read Brian Moore's pulp thrillers, or perhaps someone who'd encountered the mysterious David Montrose (né Charles Ross Graham). I didn't expect this blog would find life as a column in Canadian Notes & Queries. I wouldn't have dreamed it would lead to a gig as Series Editor of Véhicule Press's Ricochet imprint, through which the very obscurities I'd been writing about – Montrose included – would be returned to print.

As I say, I'm a lucky man.

Now comes The Dusty Bookcase book, published this week by Biblioasis, a collection of over one hundred of my favourite reviews, revisited and revised. I didn't expect this, either.

"Please tell me Bilingual Today, French Tomorrow made the cut." writes a friend. Indeed it did! What follows is a Table of Contents:

INTRODUCTION 

ALLEN
For Maimie's Sake - Grant Allen
The Devil's Die -Grant Allen
Michael's Crag - Grant Allen
Under Sealed Orders - Grant Allen
Hilda Wade - Grant Allen 

AWARD-WINNERS
The Unreasoning Heart - Constance Beresford-Howe
The Plouffe Family - Roger Lemelin
Mr. Ames Against Time - Philip Child
Fasting Friar - Edward McCourt
The Sin Sniper - Hugh Garner
The Secret of Jalna - Ronald Hambleton
Orphan Street - André Langevin 

BIGOTS & BUSINESSMEN
The Destiny of The British Empire and The U.S.A. -
"The Roadbuilder"
The Canada Doctor - Clay Perry and John L.E. Pell
The Squeaking Wheel - John Mercer
The Happy Hairdresser - Nicholas Loupos
Bilingual Today, French Tomorrow - J.V. Andrew
Retaliation - Richard Rohmer
Enough! - J.V. Andrew 

CATHOLICS & CLERGYMEN
Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk - Maria Monk
Neville Trueman - W.H. Withrow
The Master Motive - Laure Conan
The Broken Trail - George W. Kerby
The Abolishing of Death - Basil King
The Pyx - John Buell
Jean Rivard - Antoine Gérin-Lajoie
Arming for Armageddon - John Wesley White 

DICKS & DRUGS
Up the Hill and Over - Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
Bannertail - Ernest Thompson Seton
Artists, Models and Murder - Tedd Steele
The Penthouse Killings - Horace Brown
Die with Me, Lady - Ronald Cocking
Hot Freeze - Martin Brett
The Darker Traffic - Martin Brett
Return to Rainbow Country - William Davidson 

EROTICA, PERVERSION & RIBALDRY
The Door Between - Neil H. Perrin
Touchable - Lee Scott and Robert W. Tracy
The Whip Angels - Selena Warfield
A Stranger and Afraid - Marika Robert 

FUTURE PAST
Erres boréales - Florent Laurin
The House that Stood Still - A.E. van Vogt
The Lord's Pink Ocean - David Walker
The Last Canadian - William C. Heine
For My Country - Jules-Paul Tardival
Fermez la porte, on géle - René Carrier 

GOTH
The Midnight Queen - May Agnes Fleming
The Lane That Had No Turning - Gilbert Parker
Cattle - Winnifred Eaton
Crazy to Kill - Ann Cardwell
The Little Yellow House - Jessie McEwen
Satan's Bell - Joy Carroll

THE MILLARS
I Die Slowly - Kenneth Millar
The Iron Gates - Margaret Millar
Vanish in an Instant - Margaret Millar
An Air That Kills - Margaret Millar
The Fiend - Margaret Millar 

MOORE
Disowned and Distant
Sailor's Leave - Brian Moore
This Gun for Gloria - Bernard Mara
Intent to Kill - Michael Bryan
Murder in Majorca - Michael Bryan 

POLITICS
The Land of Afternoon - Gilbert Knox
Forgotten Men - Claudius Gregory
The Governor's Mistress - Warren Desmond
Margaret Trudeau - Felicity Cochrane
How Do You Spell Abducted? - Cherylyn Stacey  

POP & PULP
The Adventures of Jimmie Dale - Frank L. Packard
The Hohenzollerns in America - Stephen Leacock
Manhandled - Arthur Stringer and Russell Holman
Love is a Long Shot - Ted Allan
Soft to the Touch - Clark W. Dailey
Sugar-Puss on Dorchester Street - Al Palmer
Present Reckoning - Hugh Garner
Flee the Night in Anger - Dan Keller
A Body for a Blonde - Ken McLeod
Dale of the Mounted: Atlantic Assignment - Joe Holliday
The Quebec Plot - Leo Heaps 

ROMANCE
The Story of Louis Riel, the Rebel Chief - Anonymous
Barbara Ladd - Charles G.D. Roberts
The Chivalry of Keith Lancaster - Robert Allison Hood
The Wine of Life - Arthur Stringer
Miriam of Queens - Lilian Vaux MacKinnon
The Window-Gazer - Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
He Will Return - Helen Dickson Reynolds
Firebrand - Rosemary Aubert 

STRANGE SISTERS & LAVENDER MEN
Dark Passions Subdue - Douglas Sanderson
Murder Without Regret - E. Louise Cushing
The Queers of New York - Leo Orenstein 

TRUE CRIME
Bad Men of Canada - Thomas P. Kelley
Adopted Derelicts - Bluebell S. Phillips
The Confessions of a Bank Swindler - Lucius A. Parmalee 

VERSE
The Four Jameses - William Arthur Deacon
Everyday Children - Edith Lelean Groves
Poems of Arthur Henry Ward Jr. - Arthur Henry Ward 

WAR
In the Midst of Alarms - Robert Barr
Similia Similibus - Ulric Barthe
The Hidden Places - Bertrand W. Sinclair
The Runner - Ralph Connor
The Sixth of June - Lionel Shapiro 

THE WRITING LIFE
Toronto Doctor - Sol Allen
The House on Craig Street - Ronald J. Cooke
The Errand Runner - Leah Rosenberg
I Lost It All in Montreal - Donna Steinberg

This lucky man thanks Seth for the cover and design. I thank Chris Andrechek, who not only typeset the book but dealt with the 150 or so images I kept sending his way. My editor, Emily Donaldson, made me seem less stupider than I really is. Finally, I thank publisher Dan Wells for having faith in this book and my other crazy ideas.

There are more to come, I'm afraid.

Available at the very best bookstores and through

Biblioasis, Amazon, Chapters/Indigo, and McNally-Robinson.

A Forgotten Film of a Hidden Novel

The Spring Issue of Canadian Notes & Queries arrived in the mail yesterday, pushing aside all other reading. Sorry, Kenneth Orvis. As the cover says, this one focusses on film. Matthew Hays has an article on Claude Jutra, the man and the scandal. Natalie Atkinson writes about A Cool Sound From Hell, 1959 film noir set in Toronto. Anthony Easton covers Vixen!, Russ Meyer's Canadian sexploitation film. Chase Joint looks at the animation of Jess Mac, while Rob Benvie's 'Make It Dangerous' explores Canadian film's punk sensibility.

My contribution is a look at Intent to Kill, a feature film from '58, based on the suppressed Brian Moore novel of the same title. If this sounds at all familiar, it may be because I've written before about both the novel (here) and the film (here, here, and here). They are endlessly fascinating.

Other contributors include:

Tamara Faith Berger

Jeff Bersey

Paige Cooper

Jason Dickson

Matthew Forsythe

Stephen Fowler

Alex Good

Rohan Maitzen

David Mason

James Pollock

Seth

JC Sutcliffe

Bruce Whiteman

Catriona Wright

Alissa York!

We all worked under the watchful eyes of Emily Donaldson.

Subscriptions to CNQ – the perfect Father's Day gift – can be purchased through this link.

Next issue will be the magazine's 100th. You don't want dad to miss that, do you?

CNQ Scores National Magazine Award Noms

Word from Toronto yesterday that the Canadian Notes & Queries "Games Issue" has been nominated for a National Magazine Award. Congratulations to all who contributed:

Chris Andrechek

Tobias Carroll

Vincent Colistro

Daniel Donaldson

Alex Good

Spencer Gordon

Kasper Hartman

David Mason

Maurice Mierau

David Nickel

Alexandra Oliver

Mark Sampson

Seth

Robert Earl Stewart

Kaitlin Tremblay

Most of all, congratulations and thanks to editor Emily Donaldson, who not only put the whole thing together, but earned a second nomination for her essay "Pinball: A Walking Tour". Emily's essay is available online here at the CNQ website.

My own contribution to the issue, concerning Pierre Berton and Charles Templeton's foray into the competitive board games industry, can also be read online: "Tour de Force Reawakens".

Related post:

Passing Go with Canadian Notes and Queries

Tour de Force Reawakens!

The Dusty Bookcase in August

Today marks the ninth anniversary of The Dusty Bookcase, a good day to recognize what the sharp-eyed have already spotted. This coming August will see publication of The Dusty Bookcase: A Journey Through Canada's Forgotten, Neglected and Suppressed Writing, a collection of new essays and newly revised writing from this blog and my regular column in Canadian Notes & Queries. I'm proud to say that the publisher is none other than Biblioasis, which provides this fine description:

Largely drawn from his columns for Canadian Notes & Queries and entries in his popular blog by the same name, Brian Busby’s The Dusty Bookcase explores the fascinating world of Canada’s lesser-known literary efforts: works that suffered censorship, critical neglect, or brilliant yet fleeting notoriety. These rare and quirky totems of Canadiana, collected over the last three decades, form a travel diary of sorts – yet one without maps. Covering more than 250 books, peppered with observations on the writing and publishing scenes, Busby’s work explores our cultural past, questioning why certain works are celebrated and others ignored. Brilliantly illustrated with covers and ephemera related to the titles discussed, The Dusty Bookcase draws much needed attention to unknown writing worthy of our attention, and some of our acclaim.

I'd like to thank publisher Dan Wells and editor Emily Donaldson for their faith in this collection. I'd also like to thank the many readers, writers and booksellers who have shared my enthusiasm during this eight-year journey without maps. Rest assured, it will continue.

How could it not?

Canadian Notes & Queries en couleur

The new Canadian Notes & Queries arrived in the post a couple of days ago. The first colour issue – after forty-eight years in glorious black, white and grey – 'tis truly a thing of beauty.

My contribution, this season's Dusty Bookcase on paper, was inspired by the centenary of Ted Allan's birth this past January. The Gazette did not recognize, but I did. Of all the Allan titles in my collection, the focus of the column was the one that had remained unread: Don't You Know Anybody Else? It's a slim volume of short stories, published in the wake of Allan's fraudulent Stephen Leacock Medal win. Disturbing, though perhaps not so much as his original Love is a Long Shot, Don't You Know Anybody Else? it is one of those books sold as something it is not. 

In the same issue, I've contributed to a new feature: "What's Old: Notable CanLit reissues & offerings from the country's antiquarian booksellers". Still more retro goodness is to be found in Stephen Fowler's exhumation of Let's All Hate Toronto, a "narration, illustration and exhortation" by Jack McLaren.

Wish I could join in, but I can't... our daughter was born there. God Bless Women's College Hospital, I say!

Other contributors include:

Mark Callanan

Peter Dubé

Alison Gilmour

Amanda Jernigan

Shaena Lambert

Colette Maitland

David Mason

Shane Neilson

Diane Obomsawin

Laura Ritland

Patricia Robertson

Anakana Schofield

Seth

Patricia Smart

J.C. Sutciffe

Bruce Whiteman

Finally, it would be a great mistake to not mention Jason Dickson's interview with bookseller and poet Nelson Ball. I've drawn on Nelson's extensive knowledge of obscure CanLit so very many times in writing the Dusty Bookcase; what's more, he has provided me with many of the books covered here over the years. Just last week, Nelson sent me these two by Kenneth Orvis, the subject of a future CNQ Dusty Bookcase.

How's that for a tease?

Subscriptions to Canadian Notes & Queries can be purchased through this link.

Related post:

Pulp Noir à Montréal